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Close tops FX drama pilot

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After a lengthy courtship, Glenn Close has signed on to star in her first television pilot, an FX drama from Todd A. Kessler, Glenn Kessler and Daniel Zelman.

Close will play a hard-hitting lawyer in the project, which Sony Pictures Television has come on board to produce with the cable network's production banner FX Prods.

The pilot reunites Close with FX and Sony TV. She made her series debut as a regular on FX's gritty cop drama "The Shield," which Sony TV co-produces with Fox TV Studios. Close's starring role as hard-charging Capt. Monica Rawling on the show's fourth season earned her Emmy and Golden Globe nominations.

The untitled Kessler/Kessler/Zelman drama, which has been fast-tracked at FX, is described as a character-driven legal thriller set in New York. Close will play Patty Hughes, America's foremost high-stakes litigator. The character was written for Close, Todd Kessler said.

"It's really fantastic," he said of Close's casting in the pilot. "The relationship that (FX president and general manager) John Landgraf has established with Glenn is going to result in what we hope to be an iconic and seminal work of television."

Allen Coulter is set to direct the pilot, which is slated to begin production in February.

Close, a five-time Oscar nominee, next appears in the feature "Evening." She is repped by CAA and attorney Marc Chamlin.